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OVERALL

BUILD QUALITY

FEATURES

VALUE FOR MONEY

PERFORMANCE

Price when reviewed

£150 inc VAT

Nokia Lumia 620 review

Nokia has released a whole heap of Windows Phone 8 devices in an attempt to cater for all price ranges. The Nokia Lumia 620 is a long way away from being the best Windows Phone 8 smartphone, but it is relatively cheap. Read our Nokia Lumia 620 review to find out more. See also What's the best Nokia smartphone?

Nokia Lumia 620 review: Design and build

Measuring 115.4x61.1x11mm and weighing in at 127g the Lumia 620 is a small but chunky handset. Laid flat next to the iPhone 5 and BlackBerry Z10 it looks small, but put your head to the table and you'll realise that every one of those 11 milimetres of thickness adds up. We found that 127g is heavy for a phone with a 3.8in display - when we held the HTC Windows Phone 8S (113g) in one hand and the Lumia 620 in the other the difference was marked. And the HTC - the other 'cheap' Windows Phone - has a slightly larger display. See also: Group test: what's the best Windows phone?

No matter, the Lumia 620 wears its inexpensive Windows Phone credentials on its sleeves. It comes in a range of cheery bright colours, with a selection of coloured cases that you can remove and swap. The build feels mostly plastic and far from premium, but it is what it is and it certainly doesn't suffer from comparison with the BlackBerry Z10.

We felt that it would be robust enough to be slung in a bag or pocket and carried around. There's a reason plastic became popular, after all, although the screen doesn't half pick up smudges. One huge benefit of the removable cover is the ability to change the battery. You can also add in a MicroSD card and change out the SIM this way. It's old school, and cool.

Look to the thick but curvy and smooth sides of the Lumia 620 and you'll find camera, power and volume buttons. These feel a little cheap, and the response is spongey. At the top is a 3.5mm jack, and the smooth back cover is broken only by a Nokia logo, the rear-facing camera and a tiny speaker. The overall impression is of a cheap and cheerful smartphone for youngsters - robust and colourful, but not to be mistaken for an iPhone.

Nokia Lumia 620 review: Hardware and display

As might be expected at the inexpensive end of the market the Nokia Lumia 620 has reasonable but not great specifications. It comes with a 3.8in, TFT touchscreen with a respectable resolution of 800x480. That resolution provides a pixel density of 246ppi, which is decent at this price point. As usual Windows Phone 8 looks great, with decent colour and detail even under natural light. The touchsreen is responsive, but we found the onscreen keyboard irritatingly small to use: it has after all been developed for bigger phones than this.

The Lumia 620 is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor and 512MB of RAM. This would be nigh catastrophic on an Android handset, but Windows Phone 8 is gentle on hardware, as we'll discover in the performance section below. You get 8GB of internal storage and the previously mentioned microSD card slot to expand this.

There are two cameras: a 5-megapixel rear-facing snapper with an LED flash, and the traditional front-facing VGA camera for video calling (click through to page two for test photos). Connectivity includes NFC, USB and Wi-Fi, but there's no 4G capabilities.

Nokia Lumia 620 review: Performance

As we mentioned above, Windows Phone 8 requires relatively low-spec hardware to perform well. The top WP8 handsets such as the Nokia Lumia 820 and Nokia Lumia 920 have 1.5GHz dual-core processors and 1GB RAM, so the marginally slower chip and reduced memory shouldn't be much of a problem. It isn't, but general performance is noticeably more sluggish when compared directly to those more expensive phones. That's not to say that it is slow, just that you get what you pay for and we found ourselves occassionally waiting a split second for transitions and animations to resolve when browsing around Windows Phone's many menus.

There aren't sufficient apps in the Windows Phone world for us to run our normal benchmarks, but we can measure Javascript performance using the SunSpider test. In this the Lumia 620 was noticably slower than its more expensive brethren, scoring an average of 1440ms as compared to the Lumia 820's 940ms and the 920's 922ms. (For context, the iPhone 5 scored 903ms here, but the far from tardy Nexus 4 is slower still than the Lumia 620 with 1906ms.)

I was asked by a reader to provide scores for the similarly priced HTC Windows Phone 8S (1408ms).

Nokia Lumia 620 review: Software

The Lumia 620 includes the usual range of Nokia-exclusive apps, including Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, Nokia City Lens and Nokia Music. And then there's Windows Phone 8.

Windows Phone is very different to iOS and Android. Those who like it tend to love it, but it is an aquired taste. We've done a detailed Windows Phone 8 review which you should read, so allow my colleague Chris Martin's words to suffice here:

"The OS revolves around a highly customisable Start Screen similar to that of Windows 8. It's made up of resizable 'live tiles' which can look visually pleasing if arranged well and handily provide information without the need to open an app. Overall the interface is visually the most attractive but it's far more complex and less intuitive than iOS and Android, we have often found ourselves getting lost. A couple of new features which you might handy are 'Rooms' for sharing private content with friends and relatives, and 'Kids Corner' allowing you to select what apps and features your child(ren) can access.

"The biggest problem for us is the lacklustre Windows Store which has far less apps on offer compared to the competition. There are long lists of big name apps which simply aren't available, which is frustrating to say the least. Things are made worse by the lack of Flash support."

Nokia Lumia 620 review: Battery life

The Lumia 620's 1300 mAh battery is small, but so is the screen and the processor is not particularly speedy. We found that on a full charge you can get you a day using the Lumia 620 and still have a bit of juice left. And, of course, you can carry a spare battery.

Nokia Lumia 620 review: Cameras

The Nokia Lumia 620 continues its every expense spared specs list with a 5 megapixel camera. That's not a criticism - the HTC Windows Phone 8S and Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 have similar snappers, and that is the price territory in which we find ourselves. As you would expect froom a Nokia phone there are scene modes; a range of user adjustable settings including White Balance, ISO and exposure; and automatic features such as autofocus and flash. As we are with Nokia and Windows 8 there are also 'lenses' from which to select. These are software add-ons, some bundled with the phone and others available to download. can do any number of things really. They let you add features and filters to your phone's camera. Using the dedicated camera button makes capturing images a breeze.

We found images we took to be about as good as you'd expect from a 5Mp smartphone camera. They were okay - possibly lacking a little detail around the edges and with slightly faded looking colours, but okay. You can judge for yourself: click each photo to see it at full size.

Nokia Lumia 620 review: sample photos

The video camera is capable of shooting in 720p - again, fairly standard at this price. Options are fewer than with taking photos - you can adjust video quality and White Balances, but there aren't any scene modes. It's a phone camera's video camera. And that's okay.

Spamlover said: Comments,Spamlover,It's a great little phone but don't expect to be able to use it for more than two or three months before having to do a full reset and lose any progress in games, app data, photos that haven't been backed up. Not sure it's possible to back up all of this, only certain things. Just google "other storape problem in wp8" for the gory details. My phone is now a lovely bright green paperweight...MS need to sort it out. They released an update a month or so ago, so they have acknowledged the issue but it's still a huge problem that they in no way at all have solved. There are a couple of apps that claim to help but after a while they too are rendered innefective. Definitely avoid for now until Ms solve the problem. I can't believe that a review dated June 2013 has ovelooked this and not mentioned it. It's been a problem for months and forums online have been all over it. Pc Advisor, you're as useless as Microsoft and are offering very poor advice. The lack of apps and battery life are the least of your worries if you buy this phone. Otherwise it's great and if they solve it properly then I would heartily recommend getting one. But not before...

jabbatings said: Comments,jabbatings,I do agree with you all the way.

Hemakumar Vajjha said: Comments,Hemakumar Vajjha,Want Nokia to be in the market to make quality live.Nokia should not borrow the idea of making low quality products and pump money to market them as premium ones.

Denis Zukic said: Comments,Denis Zukic,And what about the headphone jack built into the case? That's a brilliant idea.

Denis Zukic said: Comments,Denis Zukic,I have this phone; I bought it on the week of release. Having owned a Blackberry 9700 previously, and a Nokia 5530 Xpress music phone prior to that, I love it. The OS is beautiful. It's actually a lot more simple than most think. A review I read recently explained that holding down your finger on anything you're unsure of is extremely useful. If you don't understand anything, it will bring up a menu of options.I would like to support Swapnil on his thought; Nokia have always had a hidden sort of hypothesis in which they make bulky phones. (Insert Nokia 3310 joke here)The fact that the phone is heavy is not a bad thing either. Yes the 8x is lighter, but the few grams extra isn't going to break your wrist. A lighter phone from experience damages easily. At this point, technology is getting smaller and lighter, and yes that may appeal to a mass of people, and each to their own, but the people like myself who appreciate the sturdiness of a bulky phone, or even the extra software know it's for a better reason. I would rather pay the £140 I paid for this phone and use it with my Windows laptop, (both of which cater to everything I need) than to pay £500+ for a fashion statement iPhone with an overrated OS. However; as I said before - each to their own.

hhvdblom said: Comments,hhvdblom,Ok I have to correct. Engadget did a good review: "precisely what an entry-level smartphone should be". A review with knowledge about the subject. Not what we called a "bread writers" review. And yes you are right to have an Opinion, thats exactly the difference between knowledge ;-) and thats the reason 'all' other reviews are bad, they did not do their homework. Sorry about your salary, I had the idea it reflected your knowledge about SmartPhones.

Attt said: Comments,Attt,How is the audio/call quality some reviews mention its not good

Attt said: Comments,Attt,How is the audio quality some reviews mention its not good

Matt Egan said: Comments,Matt Egan,Perhaps the tone doesn't translate to written copy. Try to imagine me saying it with a raised eyebrow and my tongue in my cheek. (I'm simply saying that an Android phone at this price would require a quad-core chip to have similar performance.)

lksjjaevn;aouergkearg said: Comments,lksjjaevn;aouergkearg,is there any chances for extended battery cover release as like L920, not by nokia but by third party...????

newyorkcitymale said: Comments,newyorkcitymale,I think 3.5 stars is a pretty good score for a budget phone, especially when you balance it with the users review score of 9 out of 10.
I'd also add that I think the bias against Windows Phone has subsided a lot in the past year, especially since Windows Phone 8 &amp; the Lumia 920 &amp; HTC 8X came out. There is, of course, some bias out there... but we're all a little biased towards the gadget that we own ourselves... especially if we paid a premium for it.
Windows Phone is finally gaining traction, and it might get a further boost when Windows Blue is released this summer.

Herman Van Der Blom said: Comments,Herman Van Der Blom,i have this phone and the surface rt. love the thetering. very easy to setup :-) review is not great :-( should be at least 4 stars. review should be a combination of quality/price. i bought it sim lock free for 270 euro. like all windows phone reviews these one is also biased. please read zdnet, thats lots better. cnet, the verge etc. all crap. low payed reviewers without much knowledge about smartphones doing their thing. engadget smartphone of 2012 is the lumia 920 by voters. a review should be an image in one way of this.

lksjjaevn;aouergkearg said: Comments,lksjjaevn;aouergkearg,its really a great phone and you did a great job to review this phone, but i need more guidance please....If i use the phone with 2 h of music and 2h of surfing and remaining hours i will turn of the 3g then howmuch the phone battery will survive??

Matt Egan said: Comments,Matt Egan,I can stick in the Windows Phone 8S and Galaxy Ace 2 test results. That's a fair point. I thought the fact that it beat the Nexus 4 was interesting. And the weight and bull aren't problems, but they do show where this handset fits in the grand scheme of things. I thought I'd made that clear?

swapnil wajpe said: Comments,swapnil wajpe,I don't understand what is wrong with most of the reviewers, why are they suddenly complaining about the weight and bulk of phones, these galaxies have made them weak, they no longer know the feel of having a sturdy well built phone in the hand and also what's with the comparisons, instead of comparing these phone to Ace 2 and HTC 8S in benchmark test, it was compared to iPhone 5 and BB Z10?? Oh come on. I can agree on being compared to 820 and 920 as they are from the same family.

sam said: Comments,sam,it will be around £160 to £170

sam said: Comments,sam,$249 not £250

t12mbo said: Comments,t12mbo,when £600 gets you a flagship phone

Callum Brown said: Comments,Callum Brown,Since when has £250 been a "budget phone"...